


not all wardrobes lead to narnia

by notimeforemotion



Series: a spectacular sort of whiplash [3]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Secret Intelligence Service | MI6, had to make sure Roxy did the thing, spoilers for TGC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 09:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12478704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notimeforemotion/pseuds/notimeforemotion
Summary: If Roxy lives, there’s no guarantee anyone is going to come looking for her, but she’ll be damned if she goes down easy in the fire.





	not all wardrobes lead to narnia

She was brilliant at playing hide and go seek as a child. 

Not that she likes to brag about it very often. It’s still a sore sport with a lot of her older cousins, how she could disappear and be the last one found—if they found her at all. Sometimes they had to concede and call her out, and she’d emerge with a small smile on her face, promise not to hide in that spot this time, and disappear again.

The key was wardrobes, she admitted to them as they lounged around after celebrating her A-levels. “You guys weren’t very good at looking in wardrobes. You’d open the doors and give a cursory look, but after seeing no movement you decided there was no way I’d be hiding in it because there simply wasn’t a lot of room and you’d move on.”

Baxter had tilted his head. “You mean to tell me you’ve been hiding in wardrobes this entire time?" 

“Pretty much,” she’d replied. “Sink against the back of it, cover up my feet with shoes or whatever, then stand stock still. You never had a chance of finding me.” 

Baxter had pushed her over, rolling his eyes, and she’d laughed at the lot of them. Not cruelly, just freely. Baxter had finished up his drink, slammed it down on the table, and said, “Alright, then. One more, for old time’s sake.”

She’d raised an eyebrow. “You think you can find me.”

“I know that you grew up here and think you’ve got all the secrets of this house on lock, but that doesn’t mean anything. Let’s go.”

So they’d played, and Baxter had insisted that he be it—probably so that he could claim the title of being the only person to have found her in a game of hide and go seek—and she hid.

That round of hide and go seek flashes in Roxy’s memory as she watches the missile approach and time seems to slow down. Baxter hadn’t found her then, but that was just because he’d wrongly assumed she wouldn’t hide in the wardrobe in her parents’ room and they’d completely bypassed looking through it. “Hiding in your parents’ room was always against the rules!” Baxter had complained, but Roxy shrugged because they hadn’t specified for that round, and that was his own fault.

Baxter hadn’t found her then, and as she breathes, “ _Shit_ ,” and lunges off her bed towards her wardrobe, pulling the door shut tight behind her, there’s no guarantee that she’ll be found this time either.

The ground trembles, stills for a moment, and then she’s falling. Roxy’s certain that most of Kingsman’s underground working had been under the lawn, not the Mansion proper, but it’s still a fall large enough that her stomach climbs to her throat. 

If Roxy lives, there’s no guarantee anyone is going to come looking for her, but she’ll be damned if she goes down easy in the fire.

 

-

 

She hits her head on the way down, maybe. Roxy isn’t altogether sure what happened to make her pass out in the first place, but when she wakes she’s still in the wardrobe and she’s breathing dusty air and it is pitch black. She doesn’t know how far she’s fallen—no way to know—but when she gives the wardrobe door a test push it moves. Barely. There’s room to move, but the ominous shifting above her suggests that she probably doesn’t want that to happen.

She leans back against the wardrobe, trying to organize her thoughts. She’s alive, for now. Her knee is sore, though that’s (hopefully) just because they locked when her fall was suddenly stopped short more than anything else. The back of her head aches, so a concussion is likely. She flung her computer on her bed—destroyed—and her mobile is in her pocket but the screen is cracked and the battery is low. If she moves a foot to the left, she has one bar of service. It’s the only place in the wardrobe that she has service.

She keeps her breaths steady. Remembers her training. Taps the side of her glasses; nobody pops up on the screen. “Merlin?” she whispers. “Anyone?”

No response.

 

-

 

Realistically, Roxy knows, the demolishing of the Kingsman Mansion will not go unnoticed. As off grid as it is, the government has missile detection software—MI6 does as well, she’s sure of it—and they will be visiting all of the places that missiles hit at the very least, trying to connect the dots. The government might just pass it off as simultaneous, contained gas explosions (Roxy can hear the conspiracy theorist machine gearing up already) and hand it off to MI6, which may be the best-case scenario. MI6 know Kingsman exists. They would know to look.

Wouldn’t they?

They have to, Roxy thinks. They wouldn’t leave any stone unturned until they were sure there were no survivors. She got into the wardrobe to ensure her survival, and she _will_ survive, damn it. Eggsy needs her to live, his brilliance of being an agent depends on it, and as he was in Sweden he’s still safe. Whoever knows about all of this can’t know about Tilde, or if they know about Eggsy and Tilde there’s no way they know about his true manner of employment. Eggsy is still alive, and Roxy is going to live, too, and she’s going to find him and they’re going to find the people who did this and they’re going to cause _hell_.

 

-

 

There’s no light in her prison. Roxy turned off her mobile as soon as she realized it wouldn’t be of any immediate use in order to preserve the battery life, and she only turns the display in her glasses off to check the time.

Sixteen hours after the missile hit, an ominous rumbling that sounds in the distance. It will either be her saviours, or it will be the people who perpetrated all of this, come back to finish the job. Either way, Roxy’s not picky. If they’re friendly, then that’s all good. If they’re not friendly, well, she’s got her handgun with her and that’s better than nothing.

Roxy turns on her mobile when the rumbling stops, when the voices start to get closer. She waits until they pause again and then she opens the Music app and turns on the playlist she and Eggsy had made one day that consists of almost entirely early-2000’s pop tunes. She doesn’t turn the volume up very high; the countryside is dead quiet, and the sudden starting of the music should be as big of a clue as any. 

It is. The voices start again, words flying a little faster this time, and Roxy holds her mobile on her stomach and leans against the back wall of the wardrobe and breathes. She doesn’t know how deep she’s buried, or how difficult it’s going to be for them to get to her, but they know she’s there.

“I’m coming, Eggsy,” she says, voice loud in the quiet of the wardrobe, and she closes her eyes at the sound of machinery getting closer. 

She’ll live. She has no idea what she’s going to do afterwards, what’s going to happen to the idea of Kingsman after this has all settled, but she’ll live.

 

-

 

Roxy’s always been the lucky one. It’s something Baxter has complained about for the years that he lived with Roxy’s family, how Roxy has always won prizes and he’s never won a thing when they enter the same draw. Roxy would try to share her winnings with him, but in the heat of the moment she’d never accept, so Roxy learned to wait for an hour or two before offering to share the spoils of her victory.

Her luck doesn’t run out today. Eight hours after the rubble directly above and around her starts moving, the door to the wardrobe opens.

She shields her eyes, but it’s dark outside. It’s been a full twenty-four hours since the missile hit, and Roxy hasn’t heard from anyone. The woman who opens the door holds out a hand, and she and a man help pull Roxy out. Roxy’s legs are shaky, and her one knee almost buckles, but she stands.

“I’m Agent Kane,” the woman says as they’re lifted to safety. “My friend is Agent Brake.”

Roxy’s head is swimming after hours of not eating or drinking, but she still—somehow—manages to think straight. “Agency?” she asks.

“MI6. You’re Kingsman?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anyone else in the building?”

Roxy wracks her memory. “Possibly just skeleton staff on the lower levels,” she admits after a few moments of struggling to remember. “They would’ve been in the underground levels, though. Arthur was at the tailor shop, and Egg—Galahad is out of country, and the rest of them were at home. Do you know?”

“All Kingsman residences have been destroyed,” Agent Kane says. “Who are you?”

“Lancelot,” Roxy says. When the agent raises an eyebrow, clearly wanting a better name than that, Roxy tilts her head up and says nothing. 

Agent Kane sighs as they emerge from the rubble into the open air. “Fine.”

“Am I free to go?” Roxy asks when her feet are finally touching grass.

“I’m afraid not,” Agent Kane says; at least she sounds a little apologetic about it. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take you in for questioning. I’m sure that you had nothing to do with it, but—protocol. You know.”

Yes, she does know. Agent Brake drapes a blanket around her shoulders, and Roxy says, “Can I at last contact the Berlin office?”

“After you’ve been cleared,” Agent Kane says.

Roxy sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “Will there are least be food and water wherever you’re taking me? Perhaps a bed?”

A smile cracks across Agent Kane’s face. “Of course, Lancelot,” she says. “Now, if you’ll please follow me, the sooner we get this over with the better.”

 

-

 

It’s a revolving door of agents asking the same questions.

_What were you investigating prior to the missile being hit?_

A drug cartel. 

_Can you give us more information than that?_

It’s classified. 

_Even now?_

I’ll tell you what you need to know if it becomes relevant.

(And, honestly, Roxy’s not too sure it’s any less relevant now. But if Eggsy’s still alive, then there’s still a chance, and if Roxy would want to have a chance because of anyone it would be Eggsy.)

_Do you know who could have done this?_

No.

_The agent’s residences were a closely guarded secret._

Which is why I’m just as intrigued as you.

_Did you have anything to do with this?_

No. 

_How can we trust you?_

What do I have to lose?

_Agent Lancelot—_

Kingsman wasn’t just my job. Kingsman was my family. I’d die before I’d let any harm come to them as a result of my actions.

_That will be all_.

 

-

 

When they let her go, finally, the first thing Roxy does is check her mobile. They didn’t replace it—of course not, no one could replace Merlin’s technological magic—but at least they charge it for her. She has no messages waiting for her, and though she wishes it wasn’t the case she’s not surprised. 

She catches up on the news first, on Poppy Adams and everything that the golden circle meant and the miraculous release of the antidote, even though it’s not entirely clear that the US President signed the papers. A chateau in the Italian Alps exploded under mysterious circumstances. New ruins in the Cambodian jungle have been discovered, and there’s confidence that they’ll manage to be more or less restored once Poppy’s bastardization of them is removed.

The date says it’s been two weeks since the missile hit.

She opens up Eggsy’s number, prays that he hasn’t changed it, and sends him a text. 

_Now that you’re done saving the world, do you think you could come get me? xR_


End file.
